Infographic: Professional Fighters League Season 1 Welterweight Playoff Standings Update

With last Saturday’s PFL 10 done, all six of Professional Fighters League’s divisions now
have final matches set for the organization’s New Year’s Eve card
at Madison Square Garden. Of the six divisional playoffs, perhaps
none encapsulates the best and worst of PFL’s inaugural season as
well as welterweight.

The best, without a doubt, is Ray Cooper
III. On Saturday, Cooper overwhelmed Jake Shields
with strikes and stuffed the veteran grappler’s attempts to get the
fight to the ground on the way to a first-round stoppage, showing
that his July regular-season victory over Shields may have been an
upset but was no fluke. Between the regular season and the
playoffs, Cooper is now 4-0 on the year with four resounding
knockouts, three of them in the first round. Cooper will face
Magomed
Magomedkerimov in the final, in a matchup of the two most
dominant fighters in the field.

For the worst of what PFL has had to offer, look no further than
the quarterfinal between second-seeded Abubakar
Nurmagomedov and No. 7 Bojan
Velickovic. First, their fight ended in a draw, which led to
Nurmagomedov advancing, due to PFL’s rule that the first round
winner advances such a case. In practice, that rule has led to a
preponderance of dull fights in the playoffs, as it all but
encourages one fighter to coast the second round. However,
Nurmagomedov was ruled medically unable to continue, something that
has happened rarely in these playoffs but hovers over the
proceedings as a distinct drawback of the one-night tournament
format. Therefore, Velickovic, who had just fought to a ho-hum draw
and been given the dispiriting news that he was eliminated, was put
back into the bracket only minutes later. Later that evening, he
was drubbed by Magomedkerimov in their semifinal, and while
Magomedkerimov would have been the favorite either way, one wonders
how much Velickovic’s more grueling quarterfinal and subsequent
emotional roller-coaster played into the result.

PFL’s final event of the year, PFL 11, takes place Monday, Dec. 31
at New York’s Madison Square Garden, and will feature five-round
tournament finals in all six of PFL’s men’s weight classes.

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